


Factiontorn

by arry azard (Ormery), gogollescent, Hammie, Quixotic



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Brainwashing, Factiontorn, Gen, Multi, Non Censensual Hair Cutting, Rebellion, Space Opera, Troll Empire, Troll Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-30
Updated: 2011-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ormery/pseuds/arry%20azard, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hammie/pseuds/Hammie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quixotic/pseuds/Quixotic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two sweeps after being forced to leave his friends in the clutches of the Empire, Karkat has become a captain in the Rebellion - a scattered force of anti-Imperial freedom fighters, bent on bringing down the Condesce and the exploitative troll society she dictates. But when a chance encounter with a long lost friend proves to him that the others are still alive, Karkat takes his ship deep into Empire territory, in a risky last ditch effort to fix the mess he left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Factiontorn

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter of Factiontorn's prologue, at long last! Arts are by Hannah, Harry, and Quix respectively.

The guards started hitting the floor before they ever had a chance.

The launch spire’s control room was well protected, but not well enough. As far as any of the sentries got to see, one minute they were waiting around, uneventfully watching security cameras, and the next they were being crushed down and slammed into walls by blasts of flashing, red and blue energy.

The movements were swift and decisive. They started out deceptively gentle - one armoured body fell straight to the floor, inexplicably asleep, and served as the first warning. The next guard had nearly raised his gun to counter attack their unseen assailant, just in time to have it ripped from his hands and bashed right through the insufficient protection of his Empire-designated helmet. Another was seconds away from hitting the alarm when she suddenly found herself violently hitting the roof until she lost consciousness.

Fifteen seconds later, the conflict was over. An uncomfortable stillness descended on the room, broken only by the continuous flickering of security footage and the gradual pooling of rust-tinted blood. With a wary glance, Sollux stepped into the control room to examine the wreckage he'd created, a gentle trickle of yellow trailing down his face from where a rifle shot had nearly taken off his head. He reached over, body rigid with tension, and closed the door behind him with a comparatively gentle tap of telekinesis to the controls.

No one stirred. The speed and intensity of the young troll's breath was slowly reducing, eyes shining with left over psionic energy as he watched the bodies on the floor. Nothing. After a too-long delay, his gaze swung up to observe the mess of monitors and display screens that represented the launch spire’s core operations system.

He didn’t know if he’d killed them. He didn’t have the heart to check. He just knew that he couldn’t afford to hesitate, no matter the consequences, because he had more important things to worry about. More important _people_ to worry about.

And this was a stunt he would only get away with if he and the others escaped. Right now, success was not only desperately desirable, but the only option.

He slid into the operator's chair, unloading a selection of tools from his sylladex and expertly hooking them into the spire’s mainframe. The computer part would be easy. In the meantime, he turned on his headset, switching to the channel of one of the trolls most relentlessly on his worried mind.

“Okay, I’m in,” he said. “How is it looking outside?”

“It’s okay so far,” Aradia answered, a short time later. “There should be a whole bunch of angry clawbeasts heading towards you! Can you see them on the cameras?”

“Gimme a sec.” A short flurry of keystrokes opened one of the screens to an outside security view. As promised, the hazy lighting of the troll training planet was displaying a horde of the native species of clawbeast - their hulking and lethally sharp bodies lumbering across the field towards the spire. “...Eheh, yep. Pretty sure the sentries just noticed them too.”

He could hear a bit of the smile in her voice. “Great! Tavros doesn’t want the guards to shoot any of them, so they’re pretty much going to be out as soon as they shake things up a little. We don’t have a very wide time frame, so keep an eye on them, okay?”

“Right, yeah, that’s fine.” He bit his lip with an oversized fang. “What about the ghosts?” he asked, apprehensive. “Are they, uh...cooperating?”

“It’s sort of... complicated,” she said. “Most of them are pretty angry at the empire, but they won’t really differentiate between you guys and the guards, so you have to be careful.”

“Ugh.” Typical. “Okay...okay whatever, we can roll with that. If we’re not out of here before they can get their spectral jazzhands all over us we’ll have bigger shit to worry about anyway. Remember, as soon as we’re clear you two need to head straight for the meeting point before anybody clues in. We won’t have a lot of time to make the pick up at this rate, either.”

“Don’t worry so much!” she said. “We’ve been over this a million times. We’ll be there.”

There was a static-y, rustling sound as the communicator changed hands, and then it was Tavros on the other end of the line. “Uh, hey Sollux, I just wanted to say good luck I guess. And, uh, I hope none of you die, or anything like that.”

“Me too,” Aradia chimed in. “Good luck, Sollux!”

He was silent for a long moment, and then sighed. “Uh...yeah. You too. Just..wait for the signal, I guess. I’ll handle things on this side.”

“Roger that! Over and out!”

Half a minute later, Sollux had thoroughly cracked the system. Previously hidden menus and commands unfolded in front of him, including access to a fresh network of security cameras. The next step was to gain access to the shuttle bay. He started maneuvering his way into giving himself the necessary gate permissions, using code he had written in advance to start fooling the system into authorizing a launch. That was their ticket off of this hell hole, and the reason they were all there in the first place. Sort of, anyway.

Basic training was a slow march across a no man’s land of misery and culling forks, and no one had ever thought differently, but it was hard to fully comprehend until you were actually there. The pace was intense, the punishments unforgiving, and the knowledge that you could be culled at any moment for failing to live up to expectations was sometimes unbearable. But they’d been watching each other’s backs. They had been given a hidden blessing in the form of a particularly terminal strain of the friendship disease, and at first they had thought that the security of the emotional bonds they’d developed on Alternia would be enough to carry them through.

But that whole plan kind of went to shit when the military finally decided that they didn’t want one of them alive anymore.

That in mind, Sollux contacted the infiltration team. He was scouring the security cameras now, but he’d still seen no sign of them. He knew they were entering carefully, though, to avoid being spotted before the confusion outside took hold, so maybe that was for the best.

“Progress check, KN, what’s up?” he asked. “I can’t see you guys from up here yet.”

“Thus far, the corridors have been free of obstruction, although I have to say there is a decidedly foreboding quality to the absolute silence,” Kanaya replied. “No news is good news, though. I think.”

“Everybody’s rushing outside to deal with the clawbeasts, just like we planned it. Nobody being there means it’s working.” He continued flipping through screens until he caught a familiar looking group of trolls slinking past one of their views. Vriska and Terezi had taken the front, rifles in hand, followed by the more cautious pace of Kanaya and Karkat. He grinned. “Oh cool, I can see you guys now. This place is connected to like every camera in the spire.”

“Do you have a means of deleting the footage from the records?”

“Yeah, that’s easy, I’ve got this whole place hacked.” And he’d written programs specifically for cleaning up their tracks afterwards. He liked to think that he’d covered every avenue.

“Good. Not that it matters - they will know our names and faces as soon as they do a line-up - but I’d rather Vriska’s obscene gestures not live on in videographic memory.”

“Eheh. Man, kind of a shame to delete them if she’s gone into all that effort just for the guards.”

Kanaya sounded less impressed. “I have instructed her as to the dangers of tempting fate, as have been readily demonstrated in a range of totally tasteful literature, but she was strangely unconvinced by my arguments.”

He snorted. “KN, we’re already tempting fate like a posse of saucy fucking seductresses - pissing the commanders off is pretty much just bonus points now.”

“The bonus of unfathomable hubris is a bonus any mission could do without. Also, can you honestly tell me that you ever wished to see that much of Vriska’s tongue? At least with Terezi the sight is a familiar one, but...”

“Can’t say I’ve ever put that much thought into the contents of Vriska’s mouth.”

“Lucky you,” she replied with heartfelt sincerity.

“Okay well, I guess make sure that the Scourge twins over there don’t fuck anything up too bad. And contact me if anything besides Vriska’s face starts going wrong.”

“What if Vriska’s face begins going wrong in a manner that complicates our work?” Kanaya insisted. “If her tongue detaches itself entirely from her mouth and runs to insult the authorities to their faces, for instance. This is appearing increasingly likely.”

“...Uh.” Sollux blinked. “This is getting into kind of weird theoreticals that are probably distracting from the task at hand, I think.”

“Okay, sorry.” She was quiet for about five seconds, and then: “I have been told that I ramble.”

“Whatever, never mind,” he said. “Just keep going. I’ll be unlocking doors for you guys as you move, so shoot anybody who gets in your way and we’ll be good.”

Closing the feed, he leaned back in his chair. The computer work was almost finished, and he’d contacted both teams. Theoretically, he’d done all he needed to do at this point, but his attention lingered on the screen that showed his team of friends resolutely moving towards the shuttle bay. He was going to stay in the control room to give them eye-in-the-sky assistance until he was sure they were safe; his job was to keep watch for guards. But ...

His eye caught on the sight of Karkat’s apprehensive face slipping past one of the security feeds. Frowning, he tapped a few more keys, shifting the camera view around to the other side. The angle caught Karkat in its sights again - he was still lurking towards the back, his somewhat half-hearted movements clearly expressing his misgivings towards the whole situation. Sollux hesitated for a long moment. Karkat was scared. Realistically, they were all probably scared, except for maybe Vriska, but still...

He tuned into Karkat’s voice channel.

“Look KK,” he said, managing to sound more confident than he felt, “this is like...officially phase two of the plan and no one’s even dead yet. Told you this was doable.”

“ _Yet_ , no one’s even dead _yet,_ ” Karkat snapped back. On screen, his expression made its usual quick transition from confusion to irritation. “Don’t you have something actually important to be doing instead of gratuitous premature backpatting over the monumental accomplishment of not getting anybody killed yet? I am going to haunt the shit out of you if all of us die because you were too busy with the fumbling congratulatory touch of your own freakish brain powers when the guards burst into the control room.”

Sollux rolled his eyes. “God, settle down. My job is coordination. I'm coordinating. Right now I'm working on the objective 'keep KK from shitting his pants before he even gets to the shuttle bay.' It's in my notes and everything.”

“Fuck you, I am as settled as it’s actually possible to be while my life is dangling precariously in the hands of some asshole who thinks ‘no one’s even dead yet’ is an accomplishment.”

Sollux found himself staring dismally off at the wall, frowning. “Seriously,” he insisted, any trace of teasing dropping from his voice. “It’s under control. Everything is going according to plan. Just thought hearing that might make you feel better.”

“I’m going to feel better when we’ve actually succeeded, okay,” Karkat said. “Everything up until that point is just going to be relentless and justified terror, and I feel like am fucking entitled to that.”

It was then that Sollux realized he'd started grinding his fangs.

“...Whatever,” he said, somewhat bitterly. “Enjoy panicking your way to freedom, then, I guess. Contact me if anything comes up.”

“What the fuck, Sollux, don’t get your bulge in a twist. Do you want us to link arms and fucking skip to the shuttle bay?”

“No, I just want this to work!” It came out in a burst of frustration, and Sollux cut himself off, embarrassed. “Anyway, you’re right, I’m kind of busy here so I guess I’ll talk to you on the other side.”

“I -” Whatever Karkat was about to say, it didn’t quite make it out. After a moment, he gave up and defaulted to an irritated: “Fine.”

Sollux shut off the voice feed, burying his face in his hands. God, this was so stupid. Why the hell did he even bother? Karkat was always like this, so why did he feel like he'd been expecting to hear something else for once?

Maybe because he knew that he may never get another chance.

He watched the guards begin to regroup outside, tension building in his heart.

Five hours ago, the order for Karkat’s culling had been issued by the secondary slaughter administrator after the discovery of his mutant blood.

They were getting off the planet tonight or not at all.


End file.
